My book, Willowtree, was once #4 on an Amazon Top 100 list.My book, Stinger Maguire, was once #8 on more than one Amazon Top 100 list.Amazon changes the rankings hourly based on sales, so the books possibly held a higher ranking, but I do not check the lists hourly.

I do not identify myself as “best selling author” or my books as “best sellers.”Rankings are based on sales. I do not consider my paltry sales numbers best selling.Consider that Amazon has a huge number of those lists.The first list is BOOKS - includes hardcover, trade, comic, paperback, eBook, etc.I doubt my books ever cracked the Top 10Million on that one.BOOKS is broken down into sub-categories, and further into sub-sub-categories, etc.Go, from BOOKS, down, down, down...and find my Best Sellers.

When ​Stinger Maguire was #8 recently, this is the category:Kindle Store>Kindle eBooks>Literary Fiction>Genre Fiction>Sports>Best Sellers in Sports Fiction>Top 100 Free. (See photo below)Top 100 Free for that hour. I ‘sold’ zero that day.

I am glad, and pissed, that Amazon has so many categories, though I was insignificantly a best selling author for a few hours.Obviously, each narrowed down category should contain books that are quite similar.Obviously, they do not.Some of the others in my Sports Top 10 seem to be Romance or Erotica, with a jock character.With so many categories, Amazon should have a more efficient system of narrowing them down.(See Photo)I am happy and grateful that thousands of folks have downloaded my eBooks.Maybe more would if “Best Seller” was in the pitch.Maybe I would be in the Baseball Hall of Fame if they had a catagory like: Sports>Team Sports>Baseball>Vermont>Little League>Red Sox Teams>Players Having Their Father As Coach>Bottom 3 Hitters>Bench Warmers.

Congratulations to all true Best Selling authors. You know who you are.

Happy Birthday today, October 1, to President Jimmy Carter, who is 91, and Rod Carew, a top hitter on anybody’s list, who is 70.Also, HBD to author, Faith Baldwin, who passed in 1978.At this hour the hardcover of her novel, “Beauty,” is #4,585,443 in BOOKS.The paperback is #8,505,606.